Jason White wrote:
> The thread on a lunar based transponder has me wondering.. How were the
> comms with the Apollo missions done? What frequencies/modes? Did
> amateurs and utility listeners of the time copy much of anything from
> the moon while man was there? Did they have these same problems or did
> the fact that Eagle was in orbit solve them?
Uhhh, both. :-)
Digging (real deep) through the links to the books for sale, videos, and
what-not on this website will yield tons of information -- I found a
complete diagram of the frequencies used, etc... way down in the links.
Wish I'd have bookmarked that one... but it was just a one-time
web-spelunking for fun.
http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/
> I've heard the crackly "That's one small step.." recordings, and it sort
> of sounds like SSB, but I had never really thought about it before. Now
> that I think about it, copying that signal would probably have been the
> rarest utility DX ever!
Not too bad, really -- just a lot of stations on the ground to deal with
the rotation of the earth and the fallibility of the hardware of the day.
The site above has a whole lot of the story of that day's comms,
including recordings of the back-channel comms between Houston and the
tracking stations. Nifty site.
Nate WY0X